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TRAVEL ADVISORY; Art From West Unveiled in New Nagoya Museum

By JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKI

Published: April 18, 1999

There is a new museum to visit in Japan, filled not with hanging scrolls or woodblock prints, but mainly with Impressionist paintings and Mediterranean antiquities.

The Nagoya-Boston Museum of Fine Arts was scheduled to open in Nagoya yesterday, with two exhibitions, ''Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Landscape'' and ''Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World.'' The museum, operated jointly by the Boston museum and the Foundation for the Arts in Nagoya, was born of necessity nearly a decade ago. The Museum of Fine Arts had plenty of art in its storerooms but was short of operating money; Nagoya, an industrial city of four million people between Tokyo and Kyoto, had cash but not enough art.

In return for $50 million in payments spread over the life of a 20-year-plus pact, the Museum of Fine Arts agreed to share its permanent collection in a collaboration that the two institutions say is ''the first museum in Japan to provide a comprehensive view of world art across all cultures and time periods.''

Each year, the Museum of Fine Arts will send two five-month loan exhibitions to the 4,700-square-foot museum in Nagoya; it will also provide exhibits lasting five years and will send objects from its extensive Jananese art collection to the Nagoya museum's ''Japanese corner.''

''Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Landscape,'' which will be on view until Sept. 26, shows the development of landscape painting from Barbizon artists like Corot and Millet, through the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists like Gauguin and van Gogh, to the Neo-Impressionists like Signac. Among the more than 60 paintings are van Gogh's ''Houses at Auvers'' and Monet's ''Grainstack (Sunset).''

The inaugural long-term show, ''Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World,'' traces the development of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece and Rome and their interconnections. Among the highlights of its 220 objects are a bird statuette from the Egyptian Late Period (circa 750 to 333 B.C.), a female figurine from Greece's Early Bronze Age (2600 to 2500 B.C.) and a head of Aphrodite from the Antonine Period of Rome (A.D. 138 to 192). The exhibition will remain on view through March 2004.

The first object in the Japanese corner is a painted Japanese folding screen from 1601-14 that depicts a European king and his court.

The museum, at 1-1-1 Kanayama-cho, Naka-ku, Nagoya, is part of the new 31-story Kanayama Minami building that houses the Hotel Grand Court Nagoya and offices and is adjacent to the Kanayama train station. It is open daily except Monday. Information is available on the Web at www.nagoya-boston.or.jp. JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKI

Photos: Japanese screen of European king and his court, 1601-14, from Boston Museum of Fine Arts, now at Nagoya museum (below). (Photographs by Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts)

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